Democracy Promotion as a World Value

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The Washington Quarterly, Volume 28, Number 1, Winter 2004-05,pp. 147-163 (Article)

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Michael McFaul

Democracy Promotion as aWorld Value

© 2004 by The Center for Strategic and International Studies and the MassachusettsInstitute of TechnologyThe Washington Quarterly • 28:1 pp. 147–163.

THE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY � WINTER 2004-05 147

Michael McFaul is the Helen and Peter Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institutionand associate professor of political science at Stanford University. He is also a nonresi-dent senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Since the September 11 attacks, President George W. Bush hasrhetorically pledged to make the promotion of democracy abroad a primaryobjective of U.S. foreign policy, emphasizing the moral and strategic impera-tives for advancing freedom around the world. At the same time, the UnitedStates has become both less liked and less admired by governments and so-cieties around the world. Although its roots are deep, this latest spike inanti-Americanism comes largely as the result of Bush’s most significant for-eign policy initiative, the invasion of Iraq, which has been extremely un-popular both in democratic and nondemocratic states. In its history, theUnited States has probably never before suffered such a low internationalstanding.

The correlation between Bush’s rhetoric about democracy promotion andthe U.S. fall from favor within the international community has created thefalse impression that other governments and peoples do not support demo-cratic ideals or the foreign policies that seek to advance them. Europe’s for-eign policy elites consider Bush’s presidential statements about democracyand human rights proof of a new virulent form of U.S. imperialism. Iranianofficials argue that Bush’s rhetoric about democracy camouflages an ulteriorU.S. motive of seizing Iraqi oil. China’s government leaders cite U.S.unilateralism and inattention to world public opinion as evidence of a lackof a real U.S. commitment to the advancement of democratic practices.1

Animated by this link between democracy promotion rhetoric and grow-ing U.S. unpopularity, many U.S. commentators have reached a similar con-clusion about the perils of democracy promotion for the United States and

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the world. These critics argue that the United States must abandon theideological mission of democracy promotion, both in Iraq and throughoutthe world, and instead follow a more pragmatic, realist foreign policy if it isto regain its respect abroad and more effectively defend U.S. national inter-ests. As the president of the Nixon Center, Dimitri Simes has argued, “Pur-suit of a universal utopia is damaging American interests.”2

Yet, this interpretation of the relationship between U.S. foreign policyand American popularity on the one hand and the status of democratic val-ues in the international community on the other is misleading. First, democ-racy as an international norm is stronger today than ever, and democracyitself is widely regarded as an ideal system of government. Democracy alsohas near-universal appeal among people of every ethnic group, every reli-gion, and every region of the world.

Second, democracy promotion as a foreign policy goal has become in-creasingly acceptable throughout most of the international community.Norms protecting the sovereignty of states still trump norms protecting therights of individuals, but the balance is shifting. The United States, espe-cially in the last century, has played a pivotal role in making the advance-ment of democratic values a legitimate foreign policy objective. Today,however, the United States no longer holds a monopoly on the business ofdemocracy promotion. That development is a sign that such policy is notjust a U.S. national interest (or camouflage for other U.S. national inter-ests), but an international norm embraced by other states, transnational or-ganizations, and international networks.

The existence of norms does not mean that they are always followed.Nonetheless, the violation of norms does not prove that normative frame-works have no meaning or influence. Furthermore, although many aroundthe world loathe U.S. power and preaching, the norm of democracy hasachieved striking universality in the current international system. The pro-motion of democracy, even when embraced and, according to many, taintedby the most powerful country in the international system, has also becomean international norm.

Democracy ’s Rise to Prominence

In On Democracy, Robert Dahl succinctly summarizes the advantages of de-mocracy as a system of government.3 According to Dahl, democracy helpsprevent rule by cruel and vicious autocrats, guarantees citizens a set of fun-damental rights, ensures a broader range of personal freedoms, helps peopleprotect their own fundamental interests, provides the maximum opportunityfor self-determination—the freedom to live under laws of one’s own choos-


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ing—provides the maximum opportunity for the exercise of moral responsi-bility, encourages human development, fosters a relatively high degree ofpolitical equality, promotes peace—as modern representative democraciesdo not fight one another—and generates prosperity. Throughout most ofmodern history, Dahl’s claims would have invoked heated debate. For mil-lennia, monarchs, emperors, mullahs, and kings ruled and based their legiti-macy on the claim of authority from God. In pockets of the world, thesekinds of autocrats still remain, but divine rightalone is no longer a sufficient justification fortheir power. These rulers must now also presentother cultural or developmental arguments toexplain why implementing democracy would beinappropriate or premature.

In the last century, fascist and Communistideologues crafted new, alternative politicalmodels to democracy. When they seized controlof powerful states, such as Germany and Russia,a normative debate about democracy and its alternatives accompanied theensuing global power struggle. The ideological contest between communismand democracy was especially competitive because the Soviet Union’s eco-nomic model of state ownership and fixed prices produced growth rates onpar with or higher than capitalist economies for several decades. Eventually,however, command economies faltered, opponents to Communist dictator-ship strengthened, and the Soviet empire collapsed. Since then, new vari-ants of autocracy have rooted in several states that emerged from the USSR’sdissolution, while autocrats still calling their regimes Communist remainin power in China and Vietnam. Yet, in all of these dictatorships, rulers nolonger champion an alternative form of government to democracy. Rather,they either claim that their regimes are already democratic even if they arenot (Russia) or that their political leaders are moving their countries “stepby step” toward democracy (China). For the vast majority of the world,then, democracy is either the practice or the stated goal.

Another twentieth-century competitor to democracy as the most effec-tive system of government was the modernizing autocrat who managed ex-ceptional growth rates in newly industrializing economies. In the 1960s and1970s, authoritarian regimes in Asia’s tigers—Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore,and South Korea—all sustained annual growth rates of 9 percent. For atime, the model of East Asian exceptionalism challenged the democraticmodel as the better performing alternative in the developing world. Stu-dents of development posited a trade-off between democracy and develop-ment and therefore advocated a sequenced approach to governance:development first, democracy second.

Democracy as aninternational normis stronger todaythan ever before.

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Today, China’s leaders still champion a variant of this model. Only one ofthe original tigers—Singapore—still clings to this form of government, how-ever, and even there the normative debate about regime type has changeddramatically: democracy is now the goal, however distant. Nor have thepractices of East Asia transferred very effectively to other regions. For everyChina, there is an Angola; for every Singapore, a Burma; for every SouthKorea, a North Korea. Although recent aggregate worldwide data indicates

that dictatorships and democracies growat roughly the same pace,4 in some re-gions, such as post-Communist Europe,the relationship between democracy andeconomic growth is clearly positive: thefastest democratizers were the first to regen-erate economic growth after communism’scollapse.5 Indeed, the oldest democraciesin the world are also the richest countriesin the world.

Pockets of illiberal creeds, racist norms,patrimonial rituals, and antidemocratic ideologies exist throughout theworld, but only Osama bin Laden–ism and its variants constitute a serioustransnational alternative to liberal democracy today. Bin Laden is the mostsuccessful propagandist of a set of illiberal, antimodern, antidemocratic,quasi-religious ideas commonly referred to as Islamic fundamentalism. Thisreference, however, is misleading; many Muslims around the world practicea form of Islamic fundamentalism but in no way endorse, much less pursue,bin Laden’s antisystemic objectives and violent means. Bin Laden and themore serious thinkers who preceded him—if bin Laden is the Lenin of thisantisystematic movement, the Egyptian Islamist, Qutb, was the Marx—havedeveloped a comprehensive set of beliefs. According to their worldview, thecentral conflict in international affairs is not between states seeking tomaximize their power. Rather, it is a normative, Manichean struggle be-tween the forces of good and evil. This ideological movement currentlyspearheaded by bin Laden not only rejects democracy as the best system ofgovernment but recommends an alternative, values-based polity, which itsubmits is both better than any Western model and also essential to living aproper Muslim life.

After decades of decline, Bin Laden–ism and its ideological soul matesgained new vibrancy after the September 11 attacks and the U.S.-led inva-sion of Iraq. Yet, even in these perilous times, this ideological alternativecannot challenge democracy’s position as the world’s most valued politicalsystem. Terrorist organizations can attack democratic regimes, but they haveyet actually to threaten any democratic regime’s hold on power or the terri-

The United Statesno longer holds amonopoly on thebusiness of democracypromotion.



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torial integrity of a democratic state. The Taliban regime in Afghanistan isnow out of power. The ideological energy of the Islamic Republic of Iran hasalso been extinguished, although the mullah’s dictatorship lingers, and Ira-nian government officials claim to be practicing democracy or, more mini-mally, introducing changes to make the regime more democratic.6 BinLaden and his ideological mentors would never make such claims.

However paradoxically, greater discussion about democracy in the widerMiddle East has been provoked in part in response to bin Laden’s resurgenceafter September 11. Arab intellectuals who contributed to the UN Arab Hu-man Development Report propelled the issue of democracy to the forefront bystating boldly that the “freedom deficit [in the Arab region] undermines hu-man development and is one of the most painful manifestations of laggingpolitical development.”7 In the last three years, Arab civil leaders and intel-lectuals have convened several international conferences to discuss andpromote democracy’s development. In Doha on June 3–4, 2004, Arab intel-lectuals explicitly stated that political reform must proceed irrespective ofprogress in resolving other regional problems, such as the Arab-Israeli con-flict. These advocates of democracy are a minority in their societies, butthey have already changed the terms of debate about politics in the region.Thus, even as disdain for U.S. power in the region skyrockets, debate aboutdemocratic values and democratic reforms has never been more serious.

Beginning with the collapse of dictatorship in Portugal in 1974, the con-solidation of democratic regimes has increased dramatically. In 1972, Free-dom House classified 43 countries in the world as free (their equivalent of“full democracy”), 38 as partly free, and 69 as not free. Thirty years later, itclassified more than twice as many—89—as free, 56 as partly free, and 47 asnot free.8 Despite impressive gains, these rough estimates of democracy’sadvancement show that many populations of the world still live under dicta-torship. The democracy deficit remains greatest in the Middle East. Auto-crats in Morocco, Jordan, and Bahrain have recently introduced minor politicalreforms, however, in the long run these partial reforms may delay, ratherthan spur, genuine democratization.9

Equally worrisome is the growing gap between liberal democracies andelectoral democracies, as well as the consolidation of façade democracies inmany recent transitions from authoritarian rule.10 That few state leaders inthe world today openly embrace an antidemocratic regime type does notmean that all or even most leaders in the world actually practice democracy.Indeed, most tyrants and pseudo-democrats would claim that they eitherpractice democracy or are trying to chart an evolutionary transition to de-mocracy, not that they are advocating an alternative to democracy. In fact,elections even occur in most dictatorships around the world and sometimes,such as in Serbia in 2000, Kenya in 2002, or Georgia in 2003, they even play

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an instrumental role in toppling an entrenched autocrat.11 To undertakesuch risky actions willfully, leaders in authoritarian regimes must feel somenormative and exogenous pressure to hold elections. For the time being,serious debate around the world about the best system of government ap-pears to be over.

Of course, the statement “American democracy is the best system of gov-ernment” still provokes argument, if not anger and resentment. Indeed, theU.S. practice of democracy is itself flawed, tainted by antiquated practicessuch as the use of the electoral college, serious charges of disenfranchise-

ment during the 2000 presidential election,and seemingly illiberal policies including thecontinued use of the death penalty. For manyaround the world, several democracies havebecome strong alternative and more attrac-tive models to the U.S. practice of democracy.These multiple models, however, are a positivedevelopment for democracy’s international ad-vance. Ironically, international resentment ofU.S. power and policies may in fact have liber-

ated the democratic norm from its close association with the United States,particularly during the Cold War. Being both pro-democracy and anti-Ameri-can is no longer a contradiction.

Throughout the world, people are embracing democracy not only as a sys-tem of government, but also as a value.12 Leaders in some autocratic re-gimes try to defend their go-slow approach to political liberalization byarguing that their citizenry is not ready for democracy. Their people, so theargument goes, are either not wealthy enough to afford the luxury of democ-racy or not Western enough to desire democracy.

Wealthier countries do have a greater prospect of sustaining democratic re-gimes than poorer countries.13 Yet, little evidence suggests that only wealthypeople desire democracy, nor do cultural and religious differences vary supportfor democracy as a value.14 Instead, survey data suggest that support for de-mocracy is robust and at relatively similar levels in every region of the world.15

Furthermore, in the Arab world, surveys suggest that a strong commitment toIslamic ideas does not hinder the embrace of democratic principles.16 The realvalues gap between the Arab world and the West does not concern the gen-eral concept of democracy as a system of rule but is rather found in men’s at-titudes toward the rights of women.17 Polls conducted by the World ValuesSurvey team show that support for antidemocratic ideologies varies through-out the world, with respondents in some countries ready to trade some de-mocracy for more order. In no country surveyed, however, does support fordictatorship exceed support for democracy.18

The existence ofnorms does notmean that they arealways followed.



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The Erosion of the State Sovereignty Norm

Since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, state leaders have long recognized thelegitimacy of state sovereignty as one of the most important internationalnorms. Although states, especially powerful states, have violated this normfor hundreds of years,19 the norm has endured and continues to influencethe conduct of international affairs.20

After the end of World War II and with the creation of the United Na-tions, the norm of state sovereignty obtained a new institutional ally andemerged as a powerful battering ram for destroying empires and undermin-ing the legitimacy of colonization. Eventually, empire became an illegitimateand near-extinct form of government. During this period, many hoped thatacquiring state sovereignty would be the first step toward democracy. Peopleliving in colonies could choose their rulers only after shedding their colonialmasters. Decolonization, self-determination, and democratization were to gohand in hand. They did not. Instead, new leaders in many decolonized re-gions trumpeted the importance of state sovereignty as an internationalnorm to excuse their denial of popular sovereignty to their citizens. Duringthe Cold War, the specter of Soviet and U.S. neo-imperialism, both allegedand actual, armed these autocrats with additional arguments in favor of rec-ognizing and defending state sovereignty. In their respective orbits, both theUnited States and the USSR also invoked state sovereignty to legitimize thesuppression of internal agents of regime change, be they “socialists” in Chileor “anti-Communists” in Czechoslovakia, and their external allies.

Nevertheless, during the last several decades, as new international normsprotecting the human rights of individuals have gained strength, the sanc-tity of state sovereignty as an international norm has eroded. When firstpenned, international agreements about human rights, such as the 1948Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, or the1993 World Conference on Human Rights, seemed to hold little weight;they sounded nice, but what would they actually accomplish? Those livingunder tyranny, however, assigned real meaning to these normative state-ments. Perhaps most famously, East European dissidents invoked the HelsinkiFinal Act to demand the recognition of their human rights, and eventuallythey succeeded.21

The strengthening of norms defending the individual and the weakeningof norms safeguarding the state have continued since the collapse of com-munism in Europe. UN secretary general Kofi Annan underscored this changein his acceptance speech for the Nobel peace prize in 2001, stating, “Today’sreal borders are not between states, but between powerful and powerless,free and fettered, privileged and humiliated.” This statement is significant

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and remarkable, coming from the head of the United Nations—the interna-tional body constituted in large measure to defend and advance the norm ofstate sovereignty. Annan continued, “In the twenty-first century I believethe mission of the United Nations will be defined by a new, more profoundawareness of the sanctity and dignity of every human life, regardless of raceor religion. This will require us to look beyond the framework of States, andbeneath the surface of nations or communities.”22

In fact, international treaties and laws crafted to protect the humanrights of all individuals have already expanded dramatically in reach and

scope. With sovereignty comes the responsi-bility to protect basic human rights. When aruler fails to meet this obligation, externalactors can now assume the right and, in-deed, may even have the responsibility tostep in according to the new norms at playin today’s international system.23 Under thedoctrine of universal jurisdiction, domesticcourts can try foreign defendants accused ofslavery, genocide, torture, and war crimes.Spain’s recent attempt to extradite and try

Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for human rights crimes committed dur-ing his 17-year rule decades earlier is perhaps the most dramatic refutationof the sovereignty norm, but it is far from the only example. The practicenow occurs throughout the world.24

The courts and other legal bodies involved in enforcing universal juris-diction do not claim to violate the norm of sovereignty. Rather, they chal-lenge the legitimacy of the norm. The International Court of Justice, theInternational Criminal Tribunal, and especially the newly formed Interna-tional Criminal Court (ICC) represent institutions designed to centralizeand further legitimate the exercise of universal jurisdiction. Internationalnongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as Human Rights Watch andAmnesty International, working closely with local human rights groups,have dramatically increased their documentation of human rights abuses asa strategy to compel the abusive regimes to institute reforms. Domesticdemocratic groups have also invoked international treaties and norms topressure their own governments to change.

Most boldly, a majority of states and people around the world considermilitary intervention for the defense of individual human rights legitimate.Countries act on that belief even if debate still remains over who has theright to authorize such humanitarian missions. Although the United Stateshas initiated or led most of these interventions, humanitarian interven-

During the lastseveral decades,state sovereignty haseroded as aninternational norm.



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tions have been undertaken without U.S. participation by other regionalactors and their armed forces, such as Australia in East Timor, the MilitaryObserver Group of the Economic Community of West Africa States and itsUN reincarnation in Sierra Leone, or the European Union in eastern Congo.The democratic members of the Organization of American States (OAS)even helped prod the U.S. intervention in Haiti in 1994.25 In all of thesecases, the promotion of democracy and the protection of human rights fea-tured prominently in the justification of military action. Two hundredyears ago, democracy would not have been part of intervening powers’lexicon.

Power, as always, can still trump ideas. Powerful states, including first andforemost the United States, have not yet felt the pinch of this growing chal-lenge to the sovereignty norm. Moreover, the methods deployed for protect-ing individual human rights are still highly contentious and at times contradictother normative goals held in higher regard by other actors in the interna-tional community. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is an obvious example;Annan called this war “illegal.” So too was the NATO war against Serbiabecause the campaign was not sanctioned by the United Nations and vio-lated the principle of nonintervention. More generally, the application ofuniversal jurisdiction by different national courts has not always been uni-form or consistent with other normative goals such as national reconcilia-tion in war-torn states.26 In addition, U.S. reluctance to recognize the ICCis not only an expression of U.S. power, but also a reflection of the flaws inthis international regime that countries must address in order for the courtto function more effectively. Nonetheless, the radical idea that individualshave rights, no matter where they live, and that rulers face constraints, nomatter what challenges they face, is growing.

Democracy Promotion as an International Norm

External actors have intervened more often and aggressively to enforce hu-man rights norms in other states than they have to promote democratic re-gime change. Although Western democracies historically have a mixed recordof exporting various forms of democracy, the legitimacy and practice of ex-ternal actors promoting democracy—be they states, NGOs, or internationalinstitutions—has grown in the last two decades as the idea that people havea right to democracy has gained support.27

In the United States, the creation of the National Endowment for De-mocracy (NED) in 1983 marked a new stage of providing direct, public sup-port for human rights activists and democratic organizations abroad. At thetime of its creation, critics denounced the NED as a tool of U.S. imperial-

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ism. Two decades later, though many still make that claim, the NED’s prac-tices have become remarkably legitimate, common, and internationalized.Groups such as the International Republican Institute, the National Demo-cratic Institute, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe(OSCE), and the Carter Center regularly send monitors to oversee electionsin other countries. Even many autocratic states now feel compelled to inviteinternational monitors to observe their elections, a normative pressure thatdid not exist just a few decades ago.

Many of these same organizations also began in the late 1980s andearly 1990s to offer technical assistance to new democracies, providingblueprints, sharing experiences, and giving advice on a range of institu-tional design and organizational questions.28 External actors provide di-rect material support and technical assistance to electoral commissions,parliaments, courts, human rights monitors, political parties, trade unions,and business associations. Also in the last two decades, foundations—some supported by government money and others by private sources—routinely have given grants to NGOs in other countries dedicated to theadvancement and consolidation of democracy. By supporting NGOscommitted to democratic norms, these foreign donors help to change thebalance of power within domestic politics in favor of democrats.29 Notall of these exporters of democratic values are U.S.-based. They also in-clude the EU’s TACIS (Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth ofIndependent States [CIS]) program for Russia and the other CIS states,the EU’s PHARE (Poland and Hungary Action for Restructuring of theEconomy) program for eastern Europe, the party institutes in Germany,the Westminster Foundation in the United Kingdom, the Institute forDemocracy in eastern Europe, and dozens of other European and Asianfoundations. Total European resources devoted to democracy promotionexceed U.S. budgets.30 In the business of election monitoring, the OSCE—a European organization—is the major world player, not the U.S. groups.In 1998, many of these transnational actors came together to form theWorld Movement for Democracy, reflecting the truly global character ofthe present community of democracy advocates.

Democracy and good governance have also emerged as a new priority ofaid organizations traditionally focused solely on economic development.Both the World Bank and the UN Development Fund have made good gov-ernance a larger component of their work. The U.S. Agency for Interna-tional Development codified the promotion of democracy as a principalobjective in its most recent strategy statement.31 The Bush administration’snew Millennium Challenge Account includes a few good governance vari-ables in assessing a country’s eligibility to receive aid funds.



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In addition to direct aid and economic assistance tied to progress in po-litical reforms, membership in multilateral institutions has also become anew and effective tool for promoting the consolidation and preventing theerosion of democracy. The OAS, for example, takes action on behalf ofmembers not only to “promote and consolidate representative democracy”but also to help sustain fragile democracies in the region.32 In Europe, theallure of EU or NATO membership did not start transitions from authoritar-ian rule in the south or east of Europe, but af-ter initial democratic breakthroughs, the EUplayed a pivotal role in anchoring democracyin Portugal, Spain, and Greece. The promise ofNATO and EU membership helped to spur theprocess of democratic consolidation in easterncentral Europe and provided real incentivesfor the democratic laggards in the region, Bul-garia and Romania, to speed the process of po-litical reform. Integration is an especially benignyet effective tool of democracy promotion be-cause the mechanism provides incentives for the leadership of a democratiz-ing country to pursue internal change. Through treaties such as the LomeIV agreement of 1989, the European Initiative for Development and Humanin Rights in 1999, and the European Neighborhood Policy in 2003, the EUhas made the promotion of democratic values a core policy objective of itsexternal relations.

Although increasing numbers of governments and people around theworld now endorse the norm of democracy promotion, even democraticstates disagree about how to do it. Few believe, for example, that militaryforce is justified to advance democratization. The slogan “you cannot forcethem to be free” still resonates with many champions of democracy. Militaryintervention’s mixed record of success in promoting democracy only strength-ens the moral argument against the use of force. Democratic states havealso disagreed about the morality and utility of using economic sanctions asa method for promoting democratic regime change. Proponents cite SouthAfrica as the great success story; opponents cite Cuba as the great failure.

More specific disagreements about how to promote democracy also exist.Should external actors press first for elections or for the adoption of a con-stitution? Should they push for presidential or parliamentary systems, federalor unitary states, proportional representation in parliament or majoritarianelectoral systems? Should outsiders work with the state or society to pressfor change? No blueprint is universally recognized as the most effective wayto promote democracy, and in fact, many even reject the idea that there canbe a blueprint.

The legitimacy andpractice of externalactors promotingdemocracy hasgrown.

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Disputes about the morality and effectiveness of the means, however,do not signal divergence on the ultimate objective. The community ofdemocratic states has accepted the legitimacy of democracy promotion. Infact, within this community, the normative burden has shifted to those notinterested in advocating democracy promotion; they are the state leaderswho must explain why they are not doing more to advance democracy’scause worldwide. Obviously, the norm of democracy promotion is not uni-versal because autocrats still control major chunks of the world. Few ofthese dictators would argue against democracy as a value or system of gov-ernment, but they do rail against exporters of democracy as illegitimate, il-legal, and imperial. Their shield is always state sovereignty, but, even thoughit still works as a normative defense, it is much less persuasive than it was50 years ago.

Disaggregating Democracy Promotion from U.S. Foreign Policy

There is a genuine correlation between the advance of democracy as well asdemocratic norms worldwide and the growth of U.S. power. No country hasdone more to strengthen the norms and practices of democracy around theworld than the United States. If Adolf Hitler had prevailed in World War II,democratic values would have survived, but few democratic regimes wouldhave remained. Similarly, if the Cold War had ended with U.S. disintegra-tion, rather than Soviet dissolution, command economies run by one-partydictatorships would be the norm and democracy the exception. Thus, evengood ideas need powerful actors to defend and advance them.

At the same time, only the most arrogant or naïve trace the ebb andflow of democracy’s advancement in the world by the successes and fail-ures of U.S. foreign policy. Most U.S. presidents have defined democracypromotion as a strategic interest, but it is often not the most important orimmediate objective. Furthermore, despite the fact that, in the long run,the growth of democracy around the world has made the United Statesmore secure,33 presidents in power rarely consider long-term gains. Theyfrequently sacrifice strategic objectives such as democracy promotion forsecurity or economic interests perceived to be more immediate and conse-quential. They have also been selective about when and where to promotedemocracy. Franklin Roosevelt was more interested in securing a demo-cratic France than in supporting democracy in Poland. Ronald Reaganpushed for democratization more forcefully in the Communist world thanin Africa. Bush seems passionate about supporting democrats in Iraq butindifferent to the struggles of democrats fighting authoritarian drift in Pa-kistan and Russia.



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Moreover, even when U.S. presidents claim to be promoting democracy,the gap between rhetoric and action is sometimes so glaring that observersquestion the depth of the U.S. normative commitment to the democraticcause. Bush’s postwar strategy for Iraq is a tragic example.34 Especially whencompared to the planning and resources devoted to ousting Saddam Hussein,the poor articulation and frequent alteration of the blueprint for regime re-construction in Iraq, as well as the scarcity and slow delivery of resources forrebuilding, have compelled even the most fer-vent supporters of democratic regime changein Iraq to question the president’s genuinecommitment to the project. Within the widerregion, Bush’s policies to date have resulted ina net loss of freedom. Authoritarian leaders inEgypt, Iran, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan are stron-ger today than they were two years ago, whileantidemocratic ideologues such as bin Ladenalso enjoy more support today than beforeBush came to power.

Yet, the failure or even absence of U.S. foreign policy efforts to promotedemocracy cannot necessarily or automatically be equated with the undesir-ability of democracy as an objective in a given country or an indictment ofthe norm of democracy promotion in international affairs more generally.The United States is still the most powerful actor in the international sys-tem and therefore has more power than any other state or nonstate actor topromote or impede democratic development. At the same time, the UnitedStates is no longer the only force in the world pushing for democracy orhelping to legitimize the promotion of democracy as an international norm.

Although the norm of democracy promotion may have originally risen inprominence because of U.S. hegemony, today the norm exhibits influencebeyond and autonomy from the reach of U.S. power. This means that Euro-pean leaders can criticize U.S. international actions but still remain commit-ted to their own policies of democracy promotion. Most Arab intellectualsfervently denounce the U.S. occupation of Iraq and continued U.S. supportfor Israel and more generally would welcome a weaker U.S. presence in theMiddle East. Some of these same critics of U.S. foreign policy, however, alsoapplaud (privately, if not publicly) Bush’s statements about the need formore democracy in their region. Turkish and Persian intellectuals can resistAmerican cultural encroachments but still believe in competitive elections.Polls suggest that some of those Iraqis who detest the U.S. military presencein their country also embrace democracy. Majorities of Iraqi respondentsboth support democracy and did not support the U.S.-led war against

Few believe thatmilitary force isjustified to advancedemocratization.

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Saddam’s regime.35 The same was true of Serbian democratic oppositionleaders who virulently denounced the U.S.-led bombing campaign againstSlobodan Milosevic in the spring of 1999 but then accepted grants from U.S.democracy assistance organizations just a few months later in the effort tomake Serbian presidential elections in the fall of 2000 free and fair. This is apositive sign for democracy’s advancement worldwide: the “United States”and “democracy” are no longer synonymous.

Does the Norm of Promoting Democracy Matter?

A norm can long exist, perhaps even indefinitely, while being violated. Ininternational affairs, antislavery norms enjoyed widespread recognition hun-dreds of years before the practice of slavery finally ended. Likewise, normson self-determination and decolonization garnered international legitimacywell before the last great empire collapsed. Even though slavery and coloni-zation have not been fully eradicated today, the emergence of norms againstslavery and decolonization nonetheless has played a pivotal role in changing

actual practices.Might dictatorship as a system of government

follow the same path of near extinction as sla-very and empire? Discerning a definitive answerto this question is not yet possible. Clearly, how-ever, the normative basis for pushing history inthis direction already exists, and democratsaround the world have invoked this normativeframework to strengthen their political power at

home and legitimacy abroad. In the last two decades, democrats fightingapartheid in South Africa, communism in Poland, and dictatorship in thePhilippines have invoked this international normative framework as ameans to access resources and garner legitimacy while at the same timeweaken the power and prestige of their autocratic enemies.

Influenced by this same set of values, governments in democratic statesin turn have come to the aid of these democratic forces. Often, debate ragesinternally within democracies about the priority that these norms shouldplay in the definition of national interests. The norms have become so pow-erful, however, that even elected head of states must sometimes execute for-eign policies that they themselves would not advocate. For example, Reaganwas compelled to introduce sanctions against apartheid South Africa in1986 and the Bush administration had to cut assistance to Uzbekistan in2004 because of its human rights abuses, documented by the Department ofState with assistance from human rights NGOs.36

No blueprintto promotedemocracy exists.



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The democratic criteria for membership in the EU have become so insti-tutionalized that individual leaders of states already in the EU now havelimited power to impede the process of accession for aspiring states if certainstandards are met.37 Even Turkish membership in the EU—the prospect ofwhich most current EU members find unsettling—now has momentum be-cause Turkey has made enormous progress in meeting the EU’s own norma-tive standards on democracy and market reforms.38 Thus, norms on democraticpractices now permeate international affairs. At times, they can even influ-ence the course of international politics in ways both independent of andunexpected by powerful states once thought to be the only actors of conse-quence on the world stage.

Notes

1. Unnamed officials, conversations with author, 2003–2004.

2. Dimitri Simes, “America’s Imperial Dilemma,” Foreign Affairs 82, no. 6 (Novem-ber/December 2003): 95. See Anthony Cordesman, “U.S. Policy in Iraq: A ‘Real-ist’ Approach to Its Challenges and Opportunities” (working paper, CSIS,Washington, D.C., August 6, 2004); G. John Ikenberry, “The End of theNeoconservative Moment,” Survival 46, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 7–22; Amy Chua, AWorld on Fire: How Exporting Free Markets and Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred andGlobal Instability (New York: Anchor Books, 2004); Lawrence Kaplan, “Spring-time for Realism: Washington’s New Worldview,” New Republic, June 21, 2004,pp. 20–24.

3. Robert Dahl, On Democracy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999).

4. Adam Przeworski et al., Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and theWell Being in the World, 1950–1990 (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press,2000); Robert Barro, Getting It Right: Markets and Choices in a Free Society (Cam-bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996).

5. Joel S. Hellman, “Winners Take All: The Politics of Partial Reform in PostcommunistTransitions,” World Politics 50 (January 1998): 203–234; Valerie Bunce, “The PoliticalEconomy of Postsocialism,” Slavic Review 58 (Winter 1999): 756–793; AndersÅslund, Building Capitalism: The Transformation of the Former Soviet Bloc (Cambridge,Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 2002), chap 9.

6. Unnamed Iranian government officials, conversations with author, Esfahan andTehran, Iran, October 2003.

7. United Nations Development Program and Arab Human Fund for Economic andSocial Development, Arab Human Development Report 2002: Creating Opportunitiesfor Future Generations (New York: United Nations Publications, 2002), p. 2.

8. Adrian Karatnycky, “Liberty’s Advances in a Troubled World,” Journal of Democracy14, no. 1 (January 2003): 100–113.

9. Daniel Brumberg, “Beyond Liberalization?” Wilson Quarterly 28, no. 2 (Spring 2004):47–56.

10. On the differences between electoral and liberal democracy, see Larry Diamond,Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Uni-versity Press, 1999). On the gray zone between democracy and dictatorship, see

l Michael McFaul


Thomas Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm,” Journal of Democracy 13,no. 1 (January 2002): 5–21.

11. Nikolay Marinov, “The Emergence and Survival of Competitive Elections Aroundthe World 1977–2002: The International Dimension” (unpublished manuscript,Stanford University, Stanford, Calif., 2004).

12. For elaboration as to why, see Amartya Sen, “Democracy as a Universal Value,”Journal of Democracy 10, no. 3 (July 1999): 3–17.

13. Przeworski et al., Democracy and Development.

14. Larry Diamond, “Universal Democracy?” Policy Review, no. 119 (June/July 2003):3–25.

15. See the cluster of articles under “How People View Democracy,” Journal of Democ-racy 12, no. 1 (January 2001): 93–145. The cluster comprises four articles based onsurveys in post-Communist Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. On attitudesin the Middle East, see James Zogby, What Arabs Think: Values Beliefs and Concerns(Washington, D.C.: Zogby International, 2002).

16. Mark Tessler, “Do Islamic Orientations Influence Attitudes Toward Democracy inthe Arab World? Evidence From Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Algeria,” Interna-tional Journal of Comparative Sociology 43, nos. 3–5 (June 2002): 229–249.

17. See Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, “The True Clash of Civilizations,” ForeignPolicy, no. 135 (March/April 2003): 63–69. For more detail, see Ronald Inglehartand Pippa Norris, Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change Around theWorld (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

18. “How People View Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 12, no. 1 (January 2001): 93–145.

19. Stephen Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni-versity Press, 1999).

20. Stephen Krasner, “Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Inter-vening Variables,” in International Regimes, ed. Stephen Krasner (Ithaca, N.Y.: CornellUniversity Press, 1982), p. 17.

21. Daniel Thomas, The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights and the De-mise of Communism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

22. “Annan’s Nobel Speech in Oslo,” December 11, 2001, http://www.globalpolicy.org/secgen/annan/1012oslo.htm (accessed October 13, 2004).

23. Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun, “The Responsibility to Protect,” Foreign Af-fairs 81, no. 6 (November/December 2002): 99–110.

24. Tyche Hendricks, “Ex-Salvadoran Officer Ruled Liable in Killing of Archbishop in1980,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 4, 2004, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/09/04/BAG6H8JUL11.DTL (accessed Septem-ber 26, 2004).

25. Marc Peceny, “The Democratic Peace and Contemporary U.S. Military Interven-tions” (unpublished manuscript, presented to International Studies Association,University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz., March 14–18, 2000), p. 5.

26. See Jack Goldsmith and Stephen Krasner, “The Limits of Idealism,” Daedalus 132,no. 1 (Winter 2003): 47–63.

27. Thomas Franck, “The Emerging Right to Democratic Governance,” American Journal ofInternational Law 86, no. 1 (1992): 46–91; Morton Halperin, “Guaranteeing Democ-racy,” Foreign Policy, no. 91 (Summer 1993): 105–122; Roland Rich, “Bringing Democ-racy Into International Law,” Journal of Democracy 12, no. 3 (July 2001): 20–34.



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28. See Thomas Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve (Washing-ton, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999); Larry Diamond,Promoting Democracy in the 1990s: Actors and Instruments, Issues and Imperatives(New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York, 1995); Peter Burnell, “DemocracyAssistance: The State of the Art,” in Democracy Assistance: International Coopera-tion for Democratization, ed. Peter Burnell (London: Frank Cass, 2000).

29. Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom, “Lessons From the Russia Campaign: Foreign Assis-tance, International Norms, and NGO Development,” International Organization(forthcoming).

30. Tanja Borzel and Thomas Risse, “One Size Fits All! EU Policies for the Promotionof Human Rights, Democracy, and the Rule of Law” (unpublished manuscript,workshop on Democracy Promotion, Center for Democracy, Development, andRule of Law, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif., October 4–5, 2004).

31. United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Foreign Aid in theNational Interest (Washington, D.C.: USAID, 2002), chap. 1 (“Promoting Demo-cratic Governance”).

32. Juan Mendez, “The Inter-American System of Protection: Its Contributions to theInternational Law of Human Rights,” in Realizing Human Rights: Moving From Inspi-ration to Impact, eds. Samantha Power and Graham Allison (New York: St. Martin’sPress, 2000), pp. 111–142.

33. Michael McFaul, “The Liberty Doctrine: Reclaiming the Purpose of AmericanPower,” Policy Review, no. 112 (April/May 2002): 3–24.

34. Larry Diamond, “What Went Wrong in Iraq,” Foreign Affairs 83, no. 5 (September/October 2004): 34–56.

35. Oxford Research International, Nation Survey of Iraq, June 2004.

36. Dafna Linzer, “U.S. Assails Uzbekistan Policies, Trims Aid,” Washington Post, July14, 2004, p. A14.

37. Frank Schimmelfenning, “The Community Trap: Liberal Norms, Rhetorical Actionand the Eastern Enlargement of the EU,” International Organization 55, no. 1 (Win-ter 2001): 47–80.

38. Senem Aydin and E. Fuat Keyman, “European Integration and the Transformationof Turkish Democracy,” EU-Turkey Working Papers, no. 2 (August 2004), http://shop.ceps.be/BookDetail.php?item_id=1144 (accessed September 26, 2004).

Democracy Promotion as a World Value

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